Directed by Mikio Naruse

Directed by Mikio Naruse

17 Episodes

In this new program, critic Imogen Sara Smith introduces one of Japanese cinema’s classical masters—a virtuoso of melodrama who specialized in portraying the personal and social struggles of women with supreme sensitivity. In a career that spanned four decades, he directed nearly ninety films, including silent dramas like APART FROM YOU, EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS, and STREET WITHOUT END, in which he poignantly etched the experiences of working women carrying on in the face of everyday disappointments and compromises in an often cruelly sexist society. Continuing to explore these themes throughout his career, Naruse’s artistry reached its zenith in the 1950s, when, working with renowned leads like Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Setsuko Hara, he directed a string of devastating melodramas—including LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, FLOATING CLOUDS, FLOWING, and WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS—that elevated the genre to heartrending new heights, abetted by a feeling for delicate, rhythmic editing that could build with subtle but shattering emotional force.

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Directed by Mikio Naruse

17 Episodes

  • Spotlight on Mikio Naruse
    16:16
    Spotlight on Mikio Naruse
    Episode 1

    Spotlight on Mikio Naruse

    Episode 1

    The following interview with scholar Imogen Sara Smith was recorded in 2024.

  • When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
    1:51:25
    When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
    Episode 2

    When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

    Episode 2

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
    Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan

    WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hoste...

  • Floating Clouds
    2:03:49
    Floating Clouds
    Episode 3

    Floating Clouds

    Episode 3

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1955 • Japan
    Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada

    “Short is the life of flowers, infinite their sorrows . . .” Director Mikio Naruse’s most famous film in Japan is a haunting portrait of obsessive love in a ruined world. Set amid the bombed-out landsca...

  • Flunky, Work Hard
    28:46
    Flunky, Work Hard
    Episode 4

    Flunky, Work Hard

    Episode 4

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1931 • Japan
    Starring Isamu Yamaguchi, Tomoko Naniwa, Seiichi Kato

    Mikio Naruse’s earliest available film, FLUNKY, WORK HARD is the rare work by the director not to center around female characters. It is a charming, breezy short concerning an impoverished insurance sal...

  • No Blood Relation
    1:18:56
    No Blood Relation
    Episode 5

    No Blood Relation

    Episode 5

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1932 • Japan
    Starring Shinyo Nara, Yukiko Tsukuba, Hisako Kojima

    In NO BLOOD RELATION, a gripping early example of Mikio Naruse’s cinematic boldness, featuring a screenplay by Yasujiro Ozu’s famed collaborator Kogo Noda, an actress returns to Tokyo after a successful s...

  • Apart from You
    1:00:29
    Apart from You
    Episode 6

    Apart from You

    Episode 6

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1933 • Japan
    Starring Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Akio Isono, Sumiko Mizukubo

    For APART FROM YOU, Mikio Naruse turned his camera on the lives of working women, which he would continue to do throughout his long career. In this gently devastating drama, a critical breakthrough fo...

  • Every-Night Dreams
    1:04:23
    Every-Night Dreams
    Episode 7

    Every-Night Dreams

    Episode 7

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1933 • Japan
    Starring Sumiko Kurishima, Tatsuo Saito, Teruko Kojima

    In the formally ravishing EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS, set in the dockside neighborhoods of Tokyo, a single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son—until her lon...

  • Street Without End
    1:28:43
    Street Without End
    Episode 8

    Street Without End

    Episode 8

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1934 • Japan
    Starring Setsuko Shinobu, Akio Isono, Hikaru Yamanouchi

    Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocat...

  • Ginza Cosmetics
    1:27:15
    Ginza Cosmetics
    Episode 9

    Ginza Cosmetics

    Episode 9

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1951 • Japan
    Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Ranko Hanai, Yuji Hori

    Something of a Japanese answer to the neorealist movement concurrently flowering in Europe, Mikio Naruse’s lyrical, quietly moving portrait of everyday endurance in Tokyo’s bustling Ginza district recounts a f...

  • Repast
    1:37:04
    Repast
    Episode 10

    Repast

    Episode 10

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1951 • Japan
    Starring Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, Yukiko Shimazaki

    A watershed work in the career of master director Mikio Naruse, REPAST marked the beginning of his extraordinary late-career renaissance. The first of a string of adaptations that Naruse would direct base...

  • Mother
    1:38:23
    Mother
    Episode 11

    Mother

    Episode 11

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1952 • Japan
    Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyoko Kagawa, Eiji Okada

    Rather more upbeat (and at times even lighthearted) than the transcendentally tragic melodramas he is best known for, Mikio Naruse’s bittersweet family portrait features a quietly masterful performance from ...

  • Wife
    1:36:06
    Wife
    Episode 12

    Wife

    Episode 12

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1953 • Japan
    Starring Mieko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Rentaro Mikuni

    One of six films that director Mikio Naruse adapted from the novels of Fumiko Hayashi, WIFE is an incisive, unsparing portrait of a decade-old marriage in the process of disintegrating. Opening and closin...

  • Late Chrysanthemums
    1:41:33
    Late Chrysanthemums
    Episode 13

    Late Chrysanthemums

    Episode 13

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
    Starring Haruko Sugimura, Ken Uehara, Sadako Sawamura

    Suffused with the sense of autumnal melancholy and nostalgia that its title suggests, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS is one of director Mikio Naruse’s most perfectly realized works. In a rare starring role, the gr...

  • Sound of the Mountain
    1:34:49
    Sound of the Mountain
    Episode 14

    Sound of the Mountain

    Episode 14

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
    Starring Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, So Yamamura

    Mikio Naruse’s THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (YAMA NO OTO) was one of the director’s personal favorites among his own movies. The story concerns a woman, Kukiko (Setsuko Hara), trapped in a loveless marriage to Ot...

  • Flowing
    1:56:51
    Flowing
    Episode 15

    Flowing

    Episode 15

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1956 • Japan
    Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko Takamine

    One of director Mikio Naruse’s most sublime achievements traces the fortunes of a geisha house struggling to survive in the face of a changing society. As seen through the eyes of the establishment’s new maid (K...

  • Yearning
    1:38:30
    Yearning
    Episode 16

    Yearning

    Episode 16

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1964 • Japan
    Starring Hideko Takamine, Yuzo Kayama, Mitsuko Kusabue

    One of Mikio Naruse’s supreme achievements, this transcendent melodrama weaves a heartrending story of an extended family tragedy growing out of the Second World War. The great Hideko Takamine stars as...

  • Scattered Clouds
    1:48:18
    Scattered Clouds
    Episode 17

    Scattered Clouds

    Episode 17

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1967 • Japan
    Starring Yoko Tsukasa, Yuzo Kayama, Mitsuko Kusabue

    Melodrama master Mikio Naruse’s final film is one of his most majestically melancholy works, a haunting romantic tragedy about two lost souls drawn together into a seemingly impossible relationship. After...

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